Journeys of a quilter in art, dyeing, and handquilting.

Hand Crafted Wedding Invites

When I started looking at wedding invitation options online, I found a lot a beautiful designs that were very very expensive. After showing Aaron a couple of options, he said, can’t you use your crafty skills to make us our own? All of a sudden, the wheels in my brain started turning, and I was off and away on a fun adventure. Of course! Silly me. And instantly I had an idea. From there, it all fell into place.

I wanted to incorporate my love of sewing, locally source the print job, and reflect the natural history of the property I grew up on and where we were going to get married. I found a sketch of two oak leaves and acorns online, and traced them onto fusible webbing. For 65 invites, I needed to trace 130 oak leaves and 130 acorn seeds and caps.

I cut out these fusible webbing shapes and ironed them onto scraps of fabric that were from my hand dyed fabric stash. I chose various greens for the leaves (each card received a light and dark colored oak leaf), and various dark and light browns for the acorns.

At this point, my hand and arm were started to cramp and be sore from all the trimming, so I called in reinforcements. Kim and Lesley joined me for a Sunday morning of cutting.

I designed a card with what text we wanted, and took it to our local print shop to get printed. After all the fabric shapes were cut out, I peeled off the paper backing of the fusible webbing, arranged the leaves and acorns on the paper card, and ironed the shapes down. I was pleased to discover that the fusible webbing works as well on paper as it does on fabric.

As well, I am indebted to Margaret for sharing with me the tip of taking a pin, and drawing a small cut line on the fusible webbing paper, aiding in the process of peeling the paper off of the fabric shapes. Saved me hours of frustrating peeling!

Each leaf and flower was then quilted down. I took pleasure in the slowness of the process, imagining inviting my friends and family to the wedding, looking forward to the day of. I’d do a few minutes in the evening, an hour on the weekend, and slowly, slowly, my pile of finished invites grew, until they were all complete.

Hand crafted, made with love, invites were then sent out to our friends and family.

Mandi! You totally made my day when I saw your comment. Hello! So glad to hear from you. I know, I love to craft and do it all the time . . . I can’t stop myself! I’ve been loving your blog posts too, keep the stories coming! Love, Serena